{"id":811466,"date":"2026-03-08T04:22:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T04:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/811466\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T04:22:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T04:22:24","slug":"charlton-not-yet-close-to-safety-despite-win-over-birmingham-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/811466\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlton not yet close to safety despite win over Birmingham \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nathan Jones refused to accept his Charlton side are on the brink of clinching Championship safety despite opening up a nine-point gap over the bottom three following a 1-0 victory over Birmingham.<\/p>\n

Charlie Kelman\u2019s 74th-minute strike at The Valley ensured that last season\u2019s League One play-off winners moved further clear of danger.<\/p>\n

Kelman has not been a regular starter since arriving from QPR in the summer but produced a predatory finish, his fifth goal of the campaign, just two minutes after entering the fray.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a huge win,\u201d said Jones. \u201cThe level of performance was outstanding. We had a load of good chances. In the first half we were on top but couldn\u2019t find that little bit of quality.<\/p>\n

\"Andy<\/a>\"Ireland<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEvery win is massive in this league and this stage of the season. I felt it was thoroughly deserved.<\/p>\n

\u201cOthers had won or picked up points, so we knew we had to do that as well. It\u2019s all about us getting to a points total we\u2019re comfortable with and building from there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re close [to safety]. You won\u2019t feel that way until it is mathematical. That wasn\u2019t our goal after the first 15 games. We didn\u2019t expect to be in this position.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe picked up injuries at the wrong time but now we\u2019re coming through that. The performance levels have been good lately, we haven\u2019t lost many. Could we have won a few more? Yeah. Have we let ourselves down with one or two performances? Yeah. But we are fighting and competing at this level, it\u2019s only our first year back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Birmingham suffered a third straight league loss for the first time under Chris Davies, marking his 100th match in charge.<\/p>\n

Asked about their hopes of a top-six finish, he said: \u201cThe play-offs are very unlikely now. We probably needed to get something here today. We would need an incredible run, which has been done before, but we can put that to one side for now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about the next game and getting a result in that. We\u2019ve got 10 games left, six at home and four away, we need to start getting some wins. We\u2019ve still got a huge amount to play for.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was such a soft goal for us to concede. If you don\u2019t get the first contact and it bounces then you have reduced your chances significantly of keeping the ball out of the net. We didn\u2019t do either of those things. It\u2019s extremely frustrating to lose a game like that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nathan Jones refused to accept his Charlton side are on the brink of clinching Championship safety despite opening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,9030,148942,234291,29405,393,94,4884,29835,10031,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-811466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-championship","11":"tag-charlton","12":"tag-charlton-vs-birmingham","13":"tag-chris-davies","14":"tag-england","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-nathan-jones","18":"tag-soccer","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116191647992779903","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}